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What convinced Lucian wasn't, ultimately, that Lianelle couldn't remember her past. Sure, it was suspicious how all of her connections to anyone besides May had been cut or weakened, but that was only enough to push Lianelle so far. What convinced him that May was mind controlling his friend was Lianelle's lack of interest in being anywhere but by May's side. Lianelle didn't do that for anyone. She loved Katia with an intensity Lucian had hardly seen in any marriage, but she'd only visit Quiteria for a week at a time - never staying unless it was urgently required. When armies had been raised to fight the Magyar Lianelle had been there, but even then she'd ride off alone often, returning with news about how one village or another was now free. Seeing her relegated to a bodyguard and lover of someone she'd just met, with no apparent intention to ever leave, was... wrong. It wasn't Lianelle.
And so, this is how Lucian finds himself digging a hole in an unremarkable forest in west Austria. Well, digging several holes - the landscape's changed enough in the last 1200 years that it's difficult to locate the exact spot where he and his men, victorious but weary, buried the Magyar's artifacts that they could not understand the purpose of.
"Stopping a powerful mage who is assembling a mind-controlled army of people with magic powers."
"Currently it's only the mage May and her... ally Lianelle - a close friend of mine who I believe to be mind controlled and an extremely capable fighter - but the mage plans on resurrecting powerful espers at a rate of one a week or so. I'm not sure whether she's got around to any yet. She claims she's resurrecting espers for dungeoneering but I don't trust this given the mind control and suspicious circumstances in which she acquired her magic in the first place."
"This May character is amassing the army in a different universe with espers in it? Because this one has espers in it. Do the individuals match such that we can find the me there?"
"Different one, I'm guessing? I suppose I could be wrong and this could be the same one, actually. Also she resurrected me in the esper universe but hangs out in the one where mind control prevents people from noticing magic. She's planning on resurrecting someone named Tomorrowgirl, I don't know who else."
"We had a Tomorrowgirl. Unless offical reports are lacking she wasn't actually that impactful in spite of the name - Isabella here is a better precog than Tomorrowgirl was - but her partner was a big deal combat esper."
Nod.
"I don't really have much of a plan to take the mage on. I had a trove of magical artifacts confiscated from the evil mages I fought, most of them were horrible or confusing, but one of them promised to send me to another world with allies, and that's how I ended up here."
"There was a largely decayed book on magic for blinding people, and a powder that had something to do with reverse clouds."
"...reverse... clouds... Anyway, I'm Haru, that's Isabella, Isabella and her Lucien are from, you were calling it Eclipse -?"
"Yes, we've got non-esper magic there, it hits harder at the high end and it's more flexible in the long term but the odds that any particular weird thing people don't already do all the time can get done in the near term is nil. Also we can't get there at the moment, we got here in two consecutive freak accidents via a different planet."
"I'm from Aragon in the 9th century after christ. Specifically the Aragon in the non-esper world with the magic veil I mentioned."
Isabella did the introducing for him, which is good because talking still seems kind of hard.
"I spent a lot of time in what I believe is now France, and in lands further east, helping to coordinate armies."
Nod. Lifeline's read about the Second World War - sometimes fighting is really the best option you have.
